Subject: Re: looking up entries in a table of ranges From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.no> Date: 2000/02/07 Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp Message-ID: <3158948495513418@naggum.no> * Jason Kantz | I need to make a table that returns an entry for a value in a given | range. And I'm wondering if a more experienced programmer can comment | on whether this is a common data structure with a common name. looks like a sorted association list to me. (assoc 50.0 '((10.0 . "this stuff") (40.0 . "this other stuff") (100.0 . "yet some other stuff")) :test #'<=) => (100.0 . "yet some other stuff") FIND would allow you to use a sequence of more complex objects and use :KEY to extract the slot you want to look at. in any case, I would expect such a function to be called FIND-foo, foo being the object you're looking for. whether you implement it as a general function traversing a list or a function with a fast TYPECASE dispatch on ranges is largely immaterial, though. #:Erik